Past Perfect in Portuguese – Pretérito Mais- que-Perfeito (Past Before the Past)

The Portuguese equivalent of the English Past Perfect is called Pretérito mais-que-Perfeito and we use it to express the past before the past, as in “I had met your parents before I met you.”

As you will soon see, in Portuguese there are two versions of the Pretérito mais-que- Perfeito, one simple (1 verb) and one compound (2 verbs). As counterintuitive as it may sound, the compound version, not the simple, is the one people use in day-to-day life. Read on.

Compound 

The compound version, the most colloquial of the two, is structure-wise analogous to the English Past Perfect → The auxiliary verb (Have in English, Ter in Portuguese) is conjugated in the Past tense and followed by the main verb in the Past Participle form.

As you know, there are different “kinds” of Past tenses in Portuguese (aka verb aspects), namely the Pretérito Perfeito and Pretérito Imperfeito. In this compound version, the auxiliary verb comes conjugated in the Pretérito Imperfeito. Let’s look at a couple of examples:

[Aux (P. Imperfeito) + Main (Particípio) ]

Ela já tinha estado no Brasil antes de ti.
She had already been to Brazil before you.

Eu tinha visto os Dire Straits ao vivo antes de eles serem conhecidos.
I had seen Dire Straits live before they were known.

Simple

The simple version sounds erudite and you will see it mostly in books. “Simple” because there is no auxiliary verb:

[Main (Pretérito Mais-que Perfeito)]

A Liliana pensara muito no assunto.
Liliana had given it a lot of thought.

Ela viajara muito antes de se ter apaixonado pela China.
She had traveled a long time before she fell in love with China.

Concerning conjugation, almost all verbs are regular in the Pretérito mais-que-Perfeito.  Accordingly, the Infinitive form is our stem and we add the following endings as we conjugate the verb:

	Pensar	Correr
eu	pensara	correra
tu	pensaras	correras
vocêele, ela	pensara	correra
nós	pensáramos	corrêramos
vocêseles, elas	pensaram	correram

A few verbs like Ser, Estar, Ir, Fazer or Poder (the usual suspects) are irregular. In that case, our departure point is not the Infinitive form, but the first person of the Future Subjunctive (the conjugation endings remain the same): 

	Ir	Fazer
eu	fora	fizera
tu	foras	fizeras
vocêele, ela	fora	fizera
nós	fôramos	fizéramos
vocêseles, elas	foram	fizeram